Arctic field development postponed to year 2031

Oil company Gazprom Neft will hardly do much drilling in Arctic waters over the next years. This week, the company got the federal government’s permission to postpone the development of its most perspective Arctic offshore project, the Dolginskoye, until year 2031.

The Russian Mineral Resource Agency (Rosnedra) has approved the company’s bid for postponement, RBC.ru reports. The company needs more time to complete additional geological operations on the structure, a press spokesman for the agency told the newspaper.

The Dolgiskoye field is located in the Pechora Sea about 120 km south of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and 110 km north of the mainland. Extractable resources are estimated to 200 million tons of oil. Production was originally to start in year 2019 and peak production of 4,8 million tons per year was to be reached in 2026.

Gazprom-Neft is not the only company getting its offshore oil program postponed. As previously reported by the Independent Barents Observer, also Rosneft and Gazprom are postponing their shelf programs.

The Dolginskoye is located just few kilometers away from the Prirazlomnoye field, the only Russian oil-producing field in Arctic waters. It stretches like a 90 km long colon through central parts of the Pechora Sea.

In 2014, Gazprom-Neft signed a deal with Vietnamese company Petrovietnam over a cooperation in Dolginskoye project development.

The same year, the company conducted exploration drilling on the structure with Romanian-owned drilling rig ”Saturn”. That operation ended dramatically when a storm hit the rig and inflicted damage.

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The Russians are believed to have conducted a total of 11,000 length meters of 2D seismics and 1,600 square km of 3D seismics in the area.